The Last Centurion
by Rowan Blake
Summary: Rory Williams story is a long one. One thing has kept him going for almost two thousand years, and it lives inside the Pandorica exhibit at the National Museum. The thoughts and memories of Rory as he remembers Amy-on the night that the Doctor is to return to them.


It was always her eyes that he thought about. First thing in the morning when dawn touched the corners and last thing when velvet black drew over them at night.

 _I stay with the box._

It had been the only thing he'd said to all the scientists and archeologists that came poking into that crypt of degraded Daleks and monsters with every scientific instrument known to man. He didn't have much to say to them. They wouldn't understand. Almost two thousand years gave a man (plastic or otherwise) a lot of time to think- about what to say, what to remember, what to forget. Sometimes he thought it would drive him mad.

Sometimes he thought it already had.

But as much as he thought, much as he remembered and forgot and _sat_ _there waiting for her_ , it always came back to the eyes.

When he first met her they had been big and hazel, full of tears at something a classmate had said.

"Who's that?" He had pointed at the paper cup man clutched in one of her hands, a yarn-haired raggedy man with a thick marker smile. Everybody in the fifth grade knew that daffy Pond talked to herself- with her thick Scottish accent, hair the color of a fire engine, and an imaginary friend called the Doctor, and she stuck out like a mince pie on a tray of tea cookies. In hindsight, that was why Rory liked her. In Leadworth, different was rare- you got up, you went to school, you did as you were told for eighteen years, and then you got to go out to a place called the Real World. He wasn't quite clear on all the details, but the Real World was where all the grown-ups worked, doing boring grown-up things for hours on end because with the children gone at school they had nothing better to do. Grown-ups wore suits and drank coffee while driving cars to the grocery. They got to use a dictionary that Rory and his friends hadn't found evidence of yet, but he was sure existed because there were so many words that he wasn't ever allowed to know. (He wouldn't have ever known they existed if it hadn't been for his Uncle Albert's wedding. Come to think of it, Rory hadn't seen Uncle Albert after that…)

Despite all of the superpowers out in the Real World, the people in Leadworth were…boring. They didn't explore or tell tales about the places they'd been (thinking back on it, Rory realized it might have been because they hadn't _been_ anywhere…)

But Amelia Pond told stories, fantastic stories of a man in a box that said he was the police- he wasn't the police, she corrected. He was the Doctor, and he could disappear to the moon and back in ten minutes. He ate fish fingers and custard (together!), fought monsters with his screwdriver and saved little girls from the cracks to other dimensions that hid in bedroom walls. Her stories were like magic, and she used her magic to turn Rory into the Doctor with the help of a screwdriver and one of his dad's raggy old ties. She was amazing. And different.

And Rory loved her.

When they were fifteen, those eyes had been green as Greek fire, as hard as flint in a schoolyard as Amy Pond wiped the blood from her knuckles.

"Don't you touch him ever again!" She'd snapped, hauling a bleeding Rory from the ground and turning her back on the three boys that she'd just knocked to next Boxing Day.

"Amy, I can't feel my face." He'd groaned, thick red crusting his upper lip. Was his nose broken? He didn't remember getting punched- the last thing he did remember was getting up to put himself between Amy and the footballer who was flirting with her.

"That's because you're an idiot." She grunted, setting him down at a classroom desk and handing him a tissue. He'd wiped the heavy mix of blood and sweat from his face with minimal whimpering, wishing she'd understand.

"Are you okay?" She'd asked quietly of him after he was finished.

"I'll be fine." He affirmed, head on the desk. It wasn't the first time this had happened, and they both knew it wouldn't be the last. He pulled himself up with a groan and tried to stem his nose, which was running like a faucet with a conglomerate of blood, mucus and gravel from the yard. "The Doctor wouldn't let a little thing like being pasted by the rugby team hold him down, would he?"

Amy flinched visibly when he said that. "Please don't," she whispered.

Intrigued, he had leaned forward with his bleeding nose crushed to the tissue before taking her hand. "Hey, what's wrong?"

She jerked her fingers away from his the way she always did when she was hurting and didn't want anyone to see. Outside, some of the primary school kids shrieked as they ran past the window in a game of tag. "Rory, just don't, okay? He isn't real and he isn't coming back for me."

He sat back in shock, letting the tissue fall away from his face. "They haven't finally convinced you you're bonkers, have they?" When she didn't answer, he moved a little closer to her. "Amelia?"

"Don't call me that!" She yelled so loudly that a few of the kids on the playground stopped dead in their tracks, and Rory jumped back like she was about to bite him. (It wouldn't have been the first time _that_ had happened either)

"It's Amy. Just Amy, all right? We can't keep pretending-the Doctor isn't coming back because he doesn't exist! It's time to grow up, Rory! He- _It_ never happened. I was just a kid having a nightmare." She didn't look like she believed herself when she said it- her cheeks got as red as her hair and the blood staining her hands.

Red was the color of Amy—her hair and her hope, her sadness, the lifeblood coursing through her at a speed Rory couldn't comprehend.

"It wasn't a nightmare. It was him." It had to be, because if the thing that had brought them together wasn't real, then what had their adventures been but silly games? If she'd finally given up on the tiny, almost nonexistent hope of the Doctor and all he meant to them, how would she still believe in Rory?

"Stop being stupid, Rory. It wasn't real. It wasn't real and he's not coming back."

They had stopped pretending that day- Amy didn't bring fish custard for lunch anymore, and the old neckties that she found for half price at the resale shop on Bingham Street got donated back to the bins. She started eating lunch with other girls, leaving Melody and Rory in the corner table by themselves to pick at the wilting school salads. It almost killed Rory when she started going out with boys from the rugby team. And the football team, and Jeff from down the street, along with the teenager (Ricky? Nicky? Melody had amused them all by calling him Dickie behind his back) from the counter at Davie's in town. Thankfully, Melody's tendency for trouble held them all together- Rory thought it was uproariously funny when she mail-ordered seven hundred ladybugs on the internet and let them loose in the school, but Amy always thought she should be reprimanded after they bailed her out. (Not that it ever had any effect on her- she would fall off the bed laughing when Amy finally lost it and shouted "God, where are your _parents_?!")

One such incident had occurred when Melody stole a bus to get to Amy's piano recital on time. Supposedly the car had broken down and she had missed hailing the one cab in town because of a bus that pulled in front of her when she raised her hand, so her logic was that the bus had time to spare. Amy's recital had been cut short when her phone rang and she ran out to bail Melody out of jail with Rory on her heels. They had all gone back to Amy's aunt's house to regroup after the horrible scene at the station. Melody, flopped on the bed with an old model of the blue police box as Amy had a go at her, had made a snobby remark about the pair of them.

"Oh, come on. Seriously, it's got to be you two. Oh, cut to the song. It's getting boring." She shook her head at the box.

"Nice thought, okay, but completely impossible." Amy had volleyed back without a pause. Rory's stomach had dropped through the floor, and every anatomy lesson he'd ever had in school completely failed logic for a minute as he had inexplicable heart palpitations in his feet.

"Yeah, impossible." He covered for himself. Of course it was, it always had been. Just hearing her say it aloud, though… Rory hadn't heard the rest of the conversation, but his eyes met Amy's and for a split second he could swear that there was something in those amazing eyes of hers that echoed the pit that had been aching in his stomach for nine years. It wasn't possible.

Was it? (And was it that obvious? He'd get it out of Melody later.)

"I mean, I'd love to. He's gorgeous. He's my favorite guy," she had said, moving closer to sling an arm around his shoulders. "But he's, you know-"

 _A friend._

"Gay." She said at the same time.

Every thought in his head had let off a gigantic screech and simultaneously ground to a halt. _Gay?_ The friend excuse, he could understand- he'd been there for too long to mind much. But Amelia Pond thought he was GAY? There was absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, nothing at all- but when the girl you were hopelessly and eternally in love with believed you were gay and you most certainly _weren't_ , there was only one thing to do: run for your bloody life.

The only problem had been those eyes, confused and gorgeous hazel and getting closer and closer as Amy edged towards him, dangerously close. His legs had been frozen and liquid at the same time, and the entire room was going a bit wonky at the edges. Maybe he would pass out and just get out of this whole mess with the excuse of a head injury to cover his massive embarrassment.

"Yes, _you are."_ She had insisted, as if trying to convince him that if he thought he wasn't gay that she somehow instinctively _knew_ that he was without saying. Rory stopped for a second to wonder if girls were that clairvoyant. Could he be gay? Maybe. Was now the time to think about it?

No. No, definitely not.

"No. No, I'm not."

Amy got closer, and _Dear God, if one could die of embarrassment_ kill him now. "Of course you are. Don't be stupid. In the whole time I've known you, when have you shown any interest in a _girl_?"

Rory could have killed Melody when she popped off with "Penny in the air."

And it would drop any flipping second now. "I mean, I've known you for, what, ten years? I've seen you practically every day. Name one girl you've paid the slightest bit of attention to?"

Daffy Pond.

Amelia Pond.

Amy Pond.

 _Amy._

He was going to say something, if only because she had him pinned against an invisible wall with an impenetrable gaze that cut his freakishly beating heart like glass, but finally his feet came unglued from the floor. Grateful for the salvation, he ran- not sure whether to head for the loo or the yard. He settled for the yard, bolting out the door like his scrawny, undateable arse was on fire.

Once he was outside, he bent over next to the lamp post and tried desperately not to be sick right there in the street. She knew-and if she didn't know, Melody would tell her. He could keep running, he reasoned with himself. Maybe he could be in Italy by next week. Venice was nice- he'd always wanted to go there.

"Rory!"

He could drown himself in a canal. No fuss, no muss, just an old fashioned Italian suicide.

"Rory, come back!"

Throwing himself off a bell tower? It was much messier, but effective- all the buildings in Venice had spires and sharp bits, for whatever reason. Why were old buildings so spiky? He-

 _"Rory Williams!"_

Uh-oh. Forget the drowning bit-perhaps the Pond would kill him first. He turned around with no small amount of hesitation and faced the flame-haired girl running across a dew-covered lawn in the white light of a street lamp.

"Look, I'm sorry-" he started, already prepared to be accused of stalking and weirdness and God knew what else.

"Shut up." She grabbed him round the neck and the next thing he knew they were kissing.

 _He was snogging Amelia Pond._

He was so shocked for a minute that his eyes were stuck wide open. Hers were closed, though, and this close he still couldn't believe how perfect she was: from the cinnamon sprinkle of freckles across her nose to the spidery shadows her lashes threw across her cream colored cheekbones. When she had pulled back, breathless with her eyes hopeful, he had just pulled her back in again.

Things had been amazing.

And then came the Doctor, all chin and bowtie with nowhere to go but up at a thousand miles an hour. And for Rory, a nurse who'd just been given time off for being a little bit bonkers, it was easy to feel…threatened. He was everything she said he would be- manic, funny, even in the same outfit of a ragged dress shirt and swirling blue tie. He saved the universe from a big alien eyeball without shutting up before bringing it back to give it a talking to.

Once that was over, though- he was gone just as quickly as he had come, and for the next two years Rory had to watch Amy wait for him.

He hadn't ever understood how she could wait like that for the Doctor-all those years sitting at a window, crossing off calendar days as the rest of the world moved on without you. What was it like to know that someone would come back, but never to know when? More than a few times after late shifts at the hospital, he'd gone over to Amy's place to find her curled up asleep on the couch facing the window to the garden. Before helping her to bed, he'd just watch for a while, thinking about how hard it was for her to wait-how hard it was for him to _watch_ -for the Doctor.

The ring had been the promise he'd made to himself that she wouldn't ever have to wait for him. The proposal was a spectacular failure- he had planned for her to go up with him for the weekend to London, take her out to a nice dinner and propose to her by the police box in Earl's Court- an old in-joke that was meant to make her smile. Once they'd gotten to London, though, a mess of police cars and traffic had cut them off from downtown. Rory had run through the rain to try to get the reservation on time, but the restaurant had been closed.

They ended up in a chip shop, a hole-in-the-wall place where they ate horrible fish off day-old newspaper and tried to dry their soaking wet formal wear with piles of paper napkins while Amy giggled at the fact that Rory's hair had swelled to twice its normal size in the rain. He (and his abnormally large hair) had taken a knee in a park they had walked through going back to the hotel and in spite of every single thing that had gone wrong, one-and only one-thing that day went right. She said yes.

The Doctor had come back, of course, and whisked them off to every corner of the universe- It was hard at first not to hate him. Rory got over it the first time the Doctor saved his life. There had been weird fish ladies and lizard people living under Cardiff- of all places, Cardiff- a box that was bigger on the inside than the outside. He had seen things that nobody would have believed, and he was with Amy.

And now here he sat, waiting for her. The night had been quiet-like most other nights since the end of the Blitz, the only trouble that seemed to come up was teenagers trying to break into the museum, but eventually even that pittered off as winter started to set in. The only problem was the plastic.

Rory trusted the plastic- it had saved his skin and Amy's more times than he could count in his long memory. Tonight something hummed at the edge of his hearing, something that made his teeth set themselves on edge as he scanned the camera screens for a fifth time.

There.

One of the exhibit platforms was empty. And it was right next to the Pandorica.

He was out of his chair before he could think and halfway down the hall with his torch by the time he heard the voices. They seemed familiar, but he was much more focused on the live Dalek armor that was advancing on the Pandorica.

"…not a weapon, and you don't have the power to waste." One voice said frantically. He _knew_ that voice.

"Scans indicate intruder unarmed." The other replied in a mechanical voice. Rory dropped the torch on the floor with a clatter, where it shot light towards the Pandorica.

"Do you think?" He replied. Big mistake.

The hand weapon went off with a reverberating snap, jolting Rory's bones. The Dalek spun, its eyestalk roving for view as it spat status reports. Rory wasn't really paying attention.

Because there, in the light spilling from the Pandorica's split entrance port, stood a flame haired girl with eyes the color of sea glass. His heart stuttered.

"Rory?"

It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

 _Amy._

The feel of her body slamming home into his was so surreal he almost expected her to go right through him- it wouldn't have been the first time it had happened- but she stayed, so solidly real and alive and _his,_ and for a long time he didn't want to let go. He was apologizing even as they pulled apart. For two thousand years he had worried she'd hate him. He'd be offended if someone killed him too.

"Shut up." She said, and kissed him.

More than he'd felt in two thousand years, Rory felt this. He felt his eyes pricking with tears as he pressed his Amy so close that they practically melded. He wanted to kiss every inch of her, until he couldn't breathe. He didn't want to let her go. He wanted to pull back and tell her everything. He wanted to keep his lips on hers for the next two thousand years, until she was old and gray and his hardware had melted away with rust.

Finally there was a break for air, and there were those eyes staring up at him. The Greek fire that he thought he would never see again was there blazing up at him like it had never been put out.

The Doctor was back, and so were they. Here came danger and madness and God knew what else, but of one thing Rory was absolutely sure-

He would protect her to the last.


End file.
